The invention may be used particularly, but not exclusively, in hot-rolling plants for the production of ferrous long products such as bars, rods or the like.
In order to produce finished long metal products such as bar, rod or the like, a long metal plant comprises, among other devices, a plurality of rolling stands aligned along a rolling line to continuously roll billets received from a furnace or other like source.
After the last rolling stand, the product is generally cut in bar segments which are subsequently cooled at ambient temperature, for example in a cooling bed.
The long product can be discharged on the cooling bed by an apparatus called a drum.
A long product production plant can be configured to simultaneously process a plurality of strands. The strands are obtained by dividing or slitting the product when it is still hot at a given point of the plant after a given number of rolling passes. The slitting is used in order to increase the production rate of a plant without increasing rolling speed of the last stands. After this slitting operation, the long metal product is divided in different strands which need to be subsequently treated.
In document EP 1 8 77 203 B1, in order to be able to process long products segments coming from different production strands, at least two drums per strand are provided. Each drum alternately receives one segment of the long product which has been previously cut. This means that two drums are allocated per strand of product. Furthermore, switching means for directing the long product segments in the appropriate drum are needed. The above mentioned elements make the equipment rather complicated, increase its complexity and require a high amount of maintenance.
Document WO 02 070156 A1 discloses a device for receiving and discharging bars coming from a rolling mill. In this document, two pairs of drums are used to handle the bars coming from a single strand. This means again that two pairs of drums are allocated per strand, which implies that four drums are needed per strand of product.